ԿԱՐՄԻՐ ԿՈՎԸ ԿԱՇԻՆ ՉԻ ՓՈԽԻ

In April 1915 the Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its civilian Armenian population. The persecutions continued with varying intensity until 1923 when the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by the Republic of Turkey. The Armenian population of the Ottoman state was reported at about two million in 1915. An estimated one million had perished by 1918, while hundreds of thousands had become homeless and stateless refugees. By 1923 virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared.

The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the Turks who had conquered lands extending across West Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe. The Ottoman government was centered in Istanbul (Constantinople) and was headed by a sultan who was vested with absolute power. The Turks practiced Islam and were a martial people. The Armenians, a Christian minority, lived as second class citizens subject to legal restrictions which denied them normal safeguards. Neither their lives nor their properties were guaranteed security. As non-Muslims they were also obligated to pay discriminatory taxes and denied participation in government. Scattered across the empire, the status of the Armenians was further complicated by the fact that the territory of historic Armenia was divided between the Ottomans and the Russians.

In its heyday in the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was a powerful state. Its minority populations prospered with the growth of its economy. By the nineteenth century, the empire was in serious decline. It had been reduced in size and by 1914 had lost virtually all its lands in Europe and Africa. This decline created enormous internal political and economic pressures which contributed to the intensification of ethnic tensions. Armenian aspirations for representation and participation in government aroused suspicions among the Muslim Turks who had never shared power in their country with any minority and who also saw nationalist movements in the Balkans result in the secession of former Ottoman territories. Demands by Armenian political organizations for administrative reforms in the Armenian-inhabited provinces and better police protection from predatory tribes among the Kurds only invited further repression. The government was determined to avoid resolving the so-called Armenian Question in any way that altered the traditional system of administration. During the reign of the Sultan Abdul Hamid (Abdulhamit) II (1876-1909), a series of massacres throughout the empire meant to frighten Armenians and so dampen their expectations, cost up to three hundred thousand lives by some estimates and inflicted enormous material losses on a majority of Armenians.

In response to the crisis in the Ottoman Empire, a new political group called the Young Turks seized power by revolution in 1908. From the Young Turks, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti, emerged at the head of the government in a coup staged in 1913. It was led by a triumvirate: Enver, Minister of War; Talaat, Minister of the Interior (Grand Vizier in 1917); and Jemal, Minister of the Marine. The CUP espoused an ultranationalistic ideology which advocated the formation of an exclusively Turkish state. It also subscribed to an ideology of aggrandizement through conquest directed eastward toward other regions inhabited by Turkic peoples, at that time subject to the Russian Empire. The CUP also steered Istanbul toward closer diplomatic and military relations with Imperial Germany. When World War I broke out in August 1914, the Ottoman Empire formed part of the Triple Alliance with the other Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and it declared war on Russia and its Western allies, Great Britain and France.

The Ottoman armies initially suffered a string of defeats which they made up with a series of easy military victories in the Caucasus in 1918 before the Central Powers capitulated later that same year. Whether retreating or advancing, the Ottoman army used the occasion of war to wage a collateral campaign of massacre against the civilian Armenian population in the regions in which warfare was being conducted. These measures were part of the genocidal program secretly adopted by the CUP and implemented under the cover of war. They coincided with the CUP’s larger program to eradicate the Armenians from Turkey and neighboring countries for the purpose of creating a new Pan-Turanian empire. Through the spring and summer of 1915, in all areas outside the war zones, the Armenian population was ordered deported from their homes. Convoys consisting of tens of thousands including men, women, and children were driven hundreds of miles toward the Syrian desert.

The deportations were disguised as a resettlement program. The brutal treatment of the deportees, most of whom were made to walk to their destinations, made it apparent that the deportations were mainly intended as death marches. Moreover, the policy of deportation surgically removed the Armenians from the rest of society and disposed of great masses of people with little or no destruction of property. The displacement process, therefore, also served as a major opportunity orchestrated by the CUP for the plundering of the material wealth of the Armenians and proved an effortless method of expropriating all of their immovable properties.

The genocidal intent of the CUP measures was also evidenced by the mass killings that accompanied the deportations. Earlier, Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman forces had been disarmed and either worked to death in labor battalions or outright executed in small batches. With the elimination of the able-bodied men from the Armenian population, the deportations proceeded with little resistance. The convoys were frequently attacked by bands of killers specifically organized for the purpose of slaughtering the Armenians. As its instrument of extermination, the government had authorized the formation of gangs of butchers—mostly convicts released from prison expressly enlisted in the units of the so-called Special Organization, Teshkilâti Mahsusa. This secret outfit was headed by the most ferocious partisans of the CUP who took it upon themselves to carry out the orders of the central government with the covert instructions of their party leaders. A sizable portion of the deportees, including women and children, were indisciminately killed in massacres along the deportation routes. The cruelty characterizing the killing process was heightened by the fact that it was frequently carried out by the sword in terrifying episodes of bloodshed. Furthermore, for the survivors, their witnessing of the murder of friends and relatives with the mass of innocent persons was the source of serious trauma. Many younger women and some orphaned children were also abducted and placed in bondage in Turkish and Muslim homes resulting in another type of trauma characterized by the shock of losing both family and one’s sense of identity. These women and children were frequently forbidden to grieve, were employed as unpaid laborers, and were required to assimilate the language and religion of their captors.

The government had made no provisions for the feeding of the deported population. Starvation took an enormous toll much as exhaustion felled the elderly, the weaker and the infirm. Deportees were denied food and water in a deliberate effort to hasten death. The survivors who reached northern Syria were collected at a number of concentration camps whence they were sent further south to die under the scorching sun of the desert. Through methodically organized deportation, systematic massacre, deliberate starvation and dehydration, and continuous brutalization, the Ottoman government reduced its Armenian population to a frightened mass of famished individuals whose families and communities had been destroyed in a single stroke.

Resistance to the deportations was infrequent. Only in one instance did the entire population of an Armenian settlement manage to evade death. The mountaineers of Musa Dagh defended themselves in the heights above their villages until French naval vessels in the eastern Mediterranean detected them and transported them to safety. The inhabitants of the city of Van in eastern Armenia defended themselves until relieved by advancing Russian forces. They abandoned the city in May 1915, a month after the siege was lifted, when the Russian Army withdrew. The fleeing population was hunted down mercilessly by Turkish irregular forces. Inland towns that resisted, such as Urfa (Edessa), were reduced to rubble by artillery. The survival of the Armenians in large part is credited not to acts of resistance, but to the humanitarian intervention led by American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau. Although the Allied Powers expressly warned the Ottoman government about its policy of genocide, ultimately it was through Morgenthau’s efforts that the plight of the Armenians was publicized in the United States. The U.S. Congress authorized the formation of a relief committee which raised funds to feed “the starving Armenians.” Near East Relief, as the committee was eventually known, saved tens of thousands of lives. After the war, it headed a large-scale effort to rehabilitate the survivors who were mostly left to their own devices in their places of deportation. By setting up refugee camps, orphanages, medical clinics and educational facilities, Near East Relief rescued the surviving Armenian population.

In the post-war period nearly four hundred of the key CUP officials implicated in the atrocities committed against the Armenians were arrested. A number of domestic military tribunals were convened which brought charges ranging from the unconstitutional seizure of power and subversion of the legal government, the conduct of a war of aggression, and conspiring the liquidation of the Armenian population, to more explicit capital crimes, including massacre. Some of the accused were found guilty of the charges. Most significantly, the ruling triumvirate was condemned to death. They, however, eluded justice by fleeing abroad. Their escape left the matter of avenging the countless victims to a clandestine group of survivors that tracked down the CUP arch conspirators. Talaat, the principal architect of the Armenian genocide, was killed in 1921 in Berlin where he had gone into hiding. His assassin was arrested and tried in a German court which acquitted him.

Most of those implicated in war crimes evaded justice and many joined the new Nationalist Turkish movement led by Mustafa Kemal. In a series of military campaigns against Russian Armenia in 1920, against the refugee Armenians who had returned to Cilicia in southern Turkey in 1921, and against the Greek army that had occupied Izmir (Smyrna) where the last intact Armenian community in Anatolia still existed in 1922, the Nationalist forces completed the process of eradicating the Armenians through further expulsions and massacres. When Turkey was declared a republic in 1923 and received international recognition, the Armenian Question and all related matters of resettlement and restitution were swept aside and soon forgotten.

In all, it is estimated that up to a million and a half Armenians perished at the hands of Ottoman and Turkish military and paramilitary forces and through atrocities intentionally inflicted to eliminate the Armenian demographic presence in Turkey. In the process, the population of historic Armenia at the eastern extremity of Anatolia was wiped off the map. With their disappearance, an ancient people which had inhabited the Armenian highlands for three thousand years lost its historic homeland and was forced into exile and a new diaspora. The surviving refugees spread around the world and eventually settled in some two dozen countries on all continents of the globe. Triumphant in its total annihilation of the Armenians and relieved of any obligations to the victims and survivors, the Turkish Republic adopted a policy of dismissing the charge of genocide and denying that the deportations and atrocities had constituted part of a deliberate plan to exterminate the Armenians. When the Red Army sovietized what remained of Russian Armenia in 1920, the Armenians had been compressed into an area amounting to no more than ten percent of the territories of their historic homeland. Armenians annually commemorate the Genocide on April 24 at the site of memorials raised by the survivors in all their communities around the world.

İ m a Turk.Look all over world,listen us,Turkey and ATATÜRK didn’t make genocide.İn 1915 armenians made a problem for us.And we get them far.only get them far.But while we re getting them far,some armenians died,some of them get illness,there is no genocide.You are making big mistake,one day Turkey will the biggest and the strongest country of world.We arent listen anybody.We are as strong as america,nobody know our strong,we can do everythink,dont forget we are ATATURK’s childs…

I was a 8.th grade student when I fşrst heard of something callad the armenian genocide. First they said it was the flu that caught the armenians and killed them. But when the second time I heard about the genocide I was a highschool student and for the history lecture I demanded to “investigate” the incidents. The facts I came across with were terrifying; one of the old guys who served in the Ottoman military told me he contributed to the mass killings, I met a lady who said her nmother was one of those children who survived the genocide and then was adopted by a Turkish familiy… Many stories like those…

Genocide is a really heavy term. We, Turks, tend to forget the past so that we can look forward; but I know that for the Armenains it is not so much easy. Armenians did not just lost their families or wealth but also their traditions, cultural heritage, social belongings, etc. I guess that hurts the most. I am not sure if those masskillings can be named as genocide or ethnic cleansing. I know there were some Armenian terrorist groups attacking Muslims and some Armenain villages, killing people but masskillings and deportation can never be an answer to terror.

I do not know if it counts as something but I feel deeply sorry for whatever happened-either genocide or not- I wish Turks could realise and sympatise with the 1915 tragedy and the Armenains could leave it behind…

I was a 8.th grade student when I first heard of something callad the Armenian genocide. First they said it was the flu that caught the Armenians and killed them. But when the second time I heard about the genocide I was a highschool student and for the history lecture I demanded to “investigate” the incidents. The facts I came across with were terrifying; one of the old guys who served in the Ottoman military told me he contributed to the mass killings, I met a lady who said her nmother was one of those children who survived the genocide and then was adopted by a Turkish familiy… Many stories like those…

Genocide is a really heavy term. We, Turks, tend to forget the past so that we can look forward; but I know that for the Armenains it is not so much easy. Armenians did not just lost their families or wealth but also their traditions, cultural heritage, social belongings, etc. I guess that hurts the most. I am not sure if those masskillings can be named as genocide or ethnic cleansing. I know there were some Armenian terrorist groups attacking Muslims and some Armenain villages, killing people in 1915 but masskillings and deportation can never be an answer to terror.

I do not know if it counts as something but I feel deeply sorry for whatever happened-either genocide or not- I wish Turks could realise and sympatise with the 1915 tragedy and the Armenains could leave it behind…

My relatives told me of first hand killings of some of my ancestors by the Turkish Gov’t. My maternal grandmother’s brother Peter, My paternal great grandfather. The New York Times, and many other newspapers reported the massacares. Why does Turkey still deny what happpened? It is not even the same Turkish government that exists today that caused the damage.

I belive that Turkey is afraid that we Armenians will demand compensation, land returned, money to cover financial and other losses. That is why the new regime in Turkey denies what happened.

Perhaps a proposal by the Armenian Nation that if Turkey would acknowledge what the previous Turkish gov’t did , then the Armenian Nation would limit redress to……….

you err….OUR DEMAND IS NOT JUST LAND OR RECOGNITION OF GENOCIDE BY THEM BUT ..’BLOOD MONEY” like the germans paid to the jews.Furthermoresince the world owes justice to Armenians if we jsut pursue recognitionand/or land they wll(the world community) think we are after land ONLY.Part of which ,viz.western Armenia -or as they call it,Aatolia, is kurdish populated since millenia-alongsde us .Therefoe justlfully we must agree with kurds-when this comes to pass- that they also declare that part with Diarbekir -“Tigranakert’ as their capital-in this they are ademant,so we must also be a bit carefull in what we demand..ABOVE ALL BLOOD MONEY-which Turkey m immediately respond we are in the red-broke-NOT S , they are to receive-are most probably already receiving “transit money” for the passag of Oil through mostly kurdish Armenian terrotories.therefore a % of that should continuously be paid to vitims’ hers fo the Armenians…IT WILL COME…by .”Shantagizoum”

Have a basic question. You started the article saying “In April 1915 the Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its civilian Armenian population.” Did they just do it out of the blue?
Why didn’t they kill the Kurds? Do you think it has anything to the with Russian influence on the Armenians living in Anatolia then?
Oh, one more. How do you name what Armenian state did in Karabagh?

Why didn’t they kill the Kurds? Do you think it has anything to the with Russian influence on the Armenians living in Anatolia then?

There can never be any excuse for state organised elimination of the Armenians which is what happened. That is the definition of genocide.

If Armenians killed Turks in revenge that is not genocide as some Turks and the ignorant Justin McCarthy are claiming.

You ask “Why didn’t they kill the Kurds?” Well, they’re killing them now. And can you tell me why that is ? Why is Turkey so aggressive about 4.5 million Iraqi Kurds wanting independence ?

The truth is that Turks swing between ultranationalism and Islamic religionism. The Kurds are Muslim so that is not a problem but they are inferior because they are not Turks. The Armenians are inferior because they are not Muslim etc. This demonisation led to the genocide of 1915 and the Turkish people have to stop lying to themselves about it. No amount of material reparation is worth living a perpetua lie.

For Turkey this is not something in the past which should be forgotten about because this resurging fascistic ideology in that country may lead it to war in the Middle East in which it may have to pay a high price. Turkey must take the current window of opportunity to do the right thing and discard its fascistic ideology .

Hey!!! If you are against any kind of bloodshed then why you are doing it yourselves. We will not forget what you did in Khojali, in Azerbaijani district. You do not have slight right to talk about humanity if you are doing inhuman things yourselves. For those who are not aware of it. http://www.khojaly.net/video.html

we are not all armenian we are Turk and proud!!!please speculators to another country turkiye is not for armenian or kurds they are welcome only if they ll live peacefully and stop killing our soldiers !!!!

No, you are not Armenian, thank g*d. But sometimes when you live peacefully in a country such as Turkey, they kill you anyway for being a dhimmi/minority. It just depends on which way the wind blows or how nationalistic the Turks are feeling that particular day.

and again we face with a competition; who killed the most? The Armenian Genocide is a shameful and tragic event; just as the Somgaid-is it written correctly?- pogrom and the mass killings in Khojaly, but neither of them is a counterpant to any of them. Just as the terrorist actions of the ASALA in the 1970s and 1980s or the Tashnak Party in the 1910s… Why cannot anyone just shut up be sorry for what happened? Why do you keep referring to the Azerbaidjan, as if it is an excuse for the genocide? Do not you feel ashamed? Do not you think that it disregards the victims of the Genocide, Somgaid pogrom, Armenian terrorist attacks and the Azeriis also?

Lizzy, you have to stop drinking whatever you have been drinking.
It will be good for your mental health.

Pure denial will get you wherever you want to go.

You can probably get more mileage, if you only said that the Genocide happened almost 100 years ago.The ones responsible for it are all dead,and that you do not represent that mentality anymore. Period.

If you are the new generation, tell us what you can do to eliminate the future ones. Just tell everybody in a simple way so that all can understand.

I don’t live in Turkey, but I am curious to see how you people and your government want to end this shenenigan.

what about your denial of the Azarbayjani genocide that you did. Maybe the reason your speaking as ignorant as you are is because you dont know anything about this country. you dont learn places and people from magazines dear you come and see for yourself

I am Armenian. My Grandparents came with their family members to the United States. Many of their thier family members perished during the Genocide. Thay remember it with such sadness that human beings could do this to another.
I say with complete distain that it is time for the Turks to accept the genocide and aks for Gods mercy for what has been done. Only when they admit responsiblity can forgivness be given. It is the ignorance of one that shines on another and after all these years the documentation speaks for itself.

so you think a murder of a million people is not political? what is it then? ah, a historical issue, almost forgot. people you need to grow up and shed the infantile insecurity of yours. if it is not a political issue i run out of thoughts as to what is? just learn to reason on your own will you and not repeat the embarassing and silly and idiotic line of argument that the turkish government has been pounding and pounding and pounding. you will do a service to yourself and others if you just start thinking on your own, it is silly, no really, it is.

On April 9 the presentation of the disk “Maragha” produced by the
Milky Way Studio took place at Artsakh State University.

April 10 is the 15th anniversary of the tragedy in the village of
Maragha, Martakert. In the night of April 10, 1992 the Azerbaijani
special operational force and the Fourth Soviet Army stationed in
Kirovabad attacked the village, which had a population of 5 thousand
by that time. The 200 soldiers of the village could not stop the
tanks and the armored machines, and the Azerbaijanis captured the
village. In four hours Maragha was liberated by the joint defense
squads. However, the Armenian militants still remember the horrible
picture they saw. Dead bodies torn to parts, people burnt alive,
old people and children taken hostages… People were not just killed.

“It was perhaps the bloodiest episode of the war in Karabakh. What
happened in Maragha was the consequence of the policy conducted by
Azerbaijan for years on. The seeds of hatred grew at the convenient
moment – Sumgait, Maragha…

Unfortunately, the policy of inciting hatred continues, which does
not allow setting up friendly relations between our countries,”
said Speaker Ashot Ghulyan during the presentation.

“The massacres of the peaceful population in Maragha had nothing to do
with the military actions. These people did not threaten Azerbaijan,
the village was not a weapon emplacement. However, the criminals have
not assumed responsibility yet,” said Vahram Atanesyan, the chair of
the Committee of External Relations.

Narine Aghabalyan, director of the Milky Way Studio, said the disc
contains documents, stories of witnesses, the participants and the
victims, photos, footages of the next day of the tragedy, as well as a
film based on the stories of witnesses. After the liberation Baroness
Caroline Cox arrived at the village. An interview with her and passages
from her book about ethnic cleansing were included in the disk as well.

Narine Aghabalyan told that the only effort to make the events
in Maragha known to the world was made by the Organization Against
Legal Arbitrariness (director Larissa Alaverdyan). A lot of materials
were accumulated, which were to be presented to the UN but the work
stopped halfway.

All the materials that the organization had collected were included in
the disk. Narine Aghabalyan said the NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs
provided archive materials and legal documents. The disk also includes
newspaper stories.

The production was sponsored by the American businessman Vardges
Anivyan, the owner of the milk factory of Stepanakert.

“According to these materials, on that day 81 people were slaughtered,
67 were taken hostages. Some hostages were later returned or exchanged,
but many are still missing. 260 families, 880 people, remained in
Karabakh after those events. Now the village of Maragha is in the
neutral territory. In satellite photos we can see that the village
has been razed to the ground,” Narine Aghabalyan says.

did you know that in karabakh there was no Armenian 150 years ago. they were planted there systematically by Russia in the last 120 . Do you know the people there are pratically screaming they will not forget the genocide done there by the Armenians And the khojaly genocide too. Leave us alone Armenia just leave innocent people alone enough of the destruction you’ve caused. yor not even a proper country your Russias toy doing their filthy work for them.Be a man about it and stop hiding behind unreasonable claimings you all know very well we didn’t hurt you.(click http://www.azatyurt.com) In the beginning of the 19th century (after the signing of the treaties of Gulustan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 between Iran and Russia on the distribution of the Azerbaijani territories), Czarist Russia began to implement the plan of creating “an Armenian State” in order to create a buffer zone in the ancient Azerbaijani territories. Thinking about the contours of the future empire 300 years ago, the first Russian Emperor Peter I charged his messengers sent to the south: “It is necessary to lure them (the Armenians) to move to our territories for Russia to rely on.”

With this purpose, in the first half of the 19th century, about 300 000 Armenians were moved to Azerbaijani territories from Iran and Turkey and settled in the territories of Irevan , Nagorno-Karabakh , Nakhchivan , Zengezur , Dereleyez , Ordubad , Vedibasar , Artashat and others.

Despite the arrival of the Armenians in the Azerbaijani territories, the native Azerbaijanis formed the majority of population there. For instance, in 1886 in the province of Zengezur of Genje out of 326 villages only 81 were the Armenian villages. In the province of Irevan 66 per cent of the population were Azerbaijanis and 34 percent – Armenians. In order to substantiate the idea that the Armenians formed the majority they began to pursue the policy of genocide against the Azerbaijanis. The Armenians secretly were armed by Czarist Russia and formed military formations.

With assistance and support of the Russian Government the most intensive mass banishment of Azerbaijanis from the territories of current Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, violence over the civil population and brutalities were in the beginning of 20th century, especially in 1905-1907.

Thousands of villages in Azerbaijani provinces like Zengezur , Irevan , Nakhchivan , Ordubad , Gazax and Karabakh were burned and all the population the children to the old were killed.

It’s interesting that someone of Seljuk/Mongol/ Central Asian descent and the Islamic relgion would question what Armenians “did to history”. Your people are not the original inhabitants of the land, were invaders and subjagaters and brought nothing but misery to the local populations who are the rightful owners of the land.

oh please the only time the balkans were in peace was the when the ottomans ruled them AND the british people in england are german decendants so are the french and Norway…e.g. so what if thousands of years ago the we moved there after some other tribes. the Armenians couldn’t get along with the cristians either because their church was different and they were being bullied until Osman Khan came and saved them.

your twisting history. your looking at it from one side your ruining it as you ruind a civilization. so we came later than you at least we tought you the simplest thing as using a toilet as you were just throughing them out the window. and we tought you how to use paper and compass and gun powder, how to ride horses, a lot of things about science, we tought you how to wash and clean. these are not my imagination it is even being tought in europe, you should be lucky we came. and p.s. we Mongols and Turks are different races

Hooray ! Lizzy for President of Azerbaijan !
And so starts the beginning of a dying country.. So much hatred, so much desire of revenge in one person alone… Don’t do that to yourself !

Start learning and preaching the following; such as, love and understanding among all the people, forgiveness as much as you can tolerate, learn not the things that separate you from the others, but educate yourself to find common grounds between yourself and others.

Don’t let your anger within you drive you ahead, let peacefulness in your heart shine the way for you for the rest of your life.

There is enough wretchedness all over the world already.
You cannot bring back the dead, but maybe you can help in some better ways so that we do not increase the numbers of dead people for empty idealogies anymore.

I am not a preacher, but I am preaching my old age experiences. That’s it.

You are sorry about the remaining peaceful armenian people in Asia Minor (that the turks preferably call anatolia)….?

I wish respectfully to tell that there is nearly nobody left to feel sorry about,
in the land that has seen civilizations (yes they did exist before turks settled there too) giving so much to humanity: The metal processing, your alphabet (arabic and latin versions included), and many other achievents.

I am an armenian and aramaic. Have you heard about the latter? If not, again respectfully I inform you that they were christians too. They were Living in Asia Minor. Their language was not even forbidden by the prophet Mohammed, because it was them who taught arabs to write, the first time ever. It was also the mother tongue of Jesus Christ from Nazareth. But the republic of Turkey has forbidden teaching it. Turks response about the seyfo (holocoust in aramaic for the genocide of christians in 1915) is: “Not happened but they deserved it”. You say Armenians deserved it because they wanted to have land (as if this is a crime, especially when the state is disloyal to its minorities). Why did aramaens deserve it? They did not reclaim any land and they have been living, speaking and writing that language sacred even to the prophet Muhammed, uninterruptedly the last 3000 years in Asia Minor, in the south east. Yet turks, with their national hero Talat in front, eliminated half a million of them too. Yes these people also go under the names Assyrians, syriacs, chaldeans…etc and have established one of the first universities in Europe: Nisibis (Nusaybin) and Edesa (Urfa).

No my friend, the hatred of turks to Armenians is not unique, it is towards all christians in Asia Minor.

I have lived and survived Turkey until the age of 16. My own analysis is that
so much hatred of turks can have a cause that is rarely lifted up. The turks are feeling like immigrants, not only in germany and US but also in Asia Minor itself. They feel and respond as if the Asia Minor, the lordship of which they have since nearly a 700 years, is not really theirs. They act as if to show their supremacy towards all minorities, especially those who have written records thousand years before them in the land.

Welcome to my land, Asia Minor. You were welcome to become our lords and exercised it over 700 years until nearly none of us is left. Please act accordingly, not as an immigrant. Your largest daily, Hurriyet, had the motto
“Turkey belongs to turks” during my early youth when I was living there. This is an immigrant thought and behaviour. Abandon this mentality, else you will remain immigrant without roots because you are not capable of digesting the greatness of civilizations before yours.

you say you lived in Turkiye but I dont think you observed it very well because you would have senn a hospitality shown there that you cant find anywhere else ver easily. We have this characteristic, it is that because our ancestors traveled a lot they learned how to respect other cultures many dont know but there is jewish and christian Turks all over the world and in Anatolia which is YES Anatolia because we call it that and it belongs to us so it is Anatolia, and us is every Turkish citizen(no matter what race) that lives in peace. Hz. Muhammed charished every language and piece of knowledge so dont go around as if he only charished yours ok? Dont teach me my prophet and dont teach me Jesus either remember it was you who tried to kill him. besides you welcomed the Selkjuks when they came because the catholics and Orthodox were slaughtering you becuase your church was different but the Seljuks let you lived as you wanted as the Ottomans. you please stop moaning its getting boring. And I really dont think you ever lived in türkiye because you wouldn’t talk like that if you had. And without forgetting Anatolia was called Anatolia by the greeks too so not just preferably by us.

You have no right to speak like that about any religion especially the one that comes from Abraham.you are so low…if we are the ones that are brutal who is killing the Iraqi people or the palestine people or the bosnians and even the armenians that were tortured for believeing in a different church how can you forget all that?! how norrow minded can someone get! you are awfull people and if only you had known the truth if only you had known the prophet mohammed is gods loved one and if you had known your religion enough to know that Jesus mentioned that the prophet after him was going to be Mohammed…if only you weren’t so ignorant I dont hate you people I pity you

I call myself a Turk, and happy to be one.
I am an engineer.
My mother tone is Turkish.
My skin colour is white.
My hairs are light brown.
My eyes are hazel.

My friend calls himself a Turk, and happy to be one.
He is a doctor.
His mother tone is Albanian,but we talk Turkish with each other.
His skin colour is lighter than mine.
His hairs are blond.
His eyes are blue.

My girlfriend calls herself a Turk, and happy to be one.
She is an economist.
Her mother tone is Kurdish, but we talk Turkish with each other.
Her skin colour is darker than mine.
Her hairs are black.
Her eyes are black, and I love her.

Neither of us care or judge ourselves about our etnicities,
We all name ourselves Turkish,
We are all living in Turkey, and we don’t want to live somewhere else.
We all feel free, and we can do what ever we want.
If my girlfriend wants to talk Kurdish with her mom, she talks. (Only I can not understand, but not a big problem for me I know girls have secrets to talk.)

Turkey is our country. Country of Turks, people of Turkey are called Turkish.
Our constitution says that when you are a Turkish Fellow-citizen, you are called Turk, and you have the same rights with others.
They never ask you about your religion, ethnicity or skincolour.
We never name each other afro, hispanic, latin, white, asian, etc. like in the USA.
All pay the same taxes, whether no one is happy about the rates.
All are equal against laws.

So, as normal citizens of Turkey that are all named Turkish Citizens can not understand what all of you talking about. In fact we don’t care either.

Sadettin don’t make the same mistake your ancestors made couple of generations ago. They ended up marrying beautiful Armenian girls and produced good looking kids.(One of my grade school friend was one of them.)
Later on these kids turned to hate their parents, specially the Armenian one.

Now, look at the problem you will be facing if you marry your Kurdish girl friend. You will be between a wall and a rock. Besides, we are just about to fight the Kurds in the Northern Iraq, unless half of your blood is Kurdish blood.

so that just sums up your idea of peace..you hate people that are not of your race like you hated the Turkish in1915 and your waiting the same thing from us but it doesnt work that way because your blind eyes dont see how many kurdish turkish marriges there are in this country and you cant probebly imagine it. so go to Mardin or sivas and get a good look.and if we’ve married soooo many Armenians then look back at your own history too varsund.

why don’t you stop talking unconsciously.how many of you search this issue thoroughly in neutral sources instead of listening unreal rumors.if there had been a genocide and armenian people were right,why they deny to open their archieves?documents shows everything apparently? don2t bother just sit on your ass and continue to listen old woman story

That’s going too far. First of all the stereotyping of Turks and Armenians in this site is so blind and cruel that no one can hope a conversation. Lizzy talks as if Armenians killed thmeselves, and respondeds only make abusive comments on Turks. All these are hate-speeches, racist comments.

Surprisingly, I’m Turk. I believe 1915 events can be referred as genocide, and the Turkish Republic can and should make a speech of apology for the events. So as one can see Turks are not all the same and united around denial. But howcome I read comments on the “all Turks”? I am sure that Armenians are also not all the same, there might be some who question the terrorism of ASALA and/or the Armenian gangs in 1914 and 1915. Because if I am here, breaking the “unity” then, tehre should be one among the Armenians.

Lizzy is sure making racist comments and it sickens us; but the respondeds are not so different.

if you think Im racist then I think you should go back and read it again becuase if I were racist then I would say yeah we did it so whats wrong of ridding the world from armenians but Im not Im saying that, ım saying we didnt do it and Armenians are just provoked, Im not generizing, the people who dont think like that wont take it upon themselves anyway

It’s an article from a Jewish magazine arguing that his denial of Armenian Genocide requires the firing of Abraham Foxman. It’s prompted other calls for the man’s firing, and hopefully it picks up steam.

When people argue, tensions run high … albeit, it is in human nature. Wise are those who think with their heads and speak from their heart, not the other way around. It is hard to find a few amongst millions that are willing to make peace, not rage war. Which is what we are observing in this forum.

I am Armenian, and I apologize for the generalizations that upset you. I disagree with the “all Turks”, or ” all Armenians” comments as well. However, masses drive politics, and politics drive events, in which masses get absorbed. After some time it is hard to say what’s history and what’s politics, and where the truth is.

-the denial of the Armenian genocide is a source of national shame (especially with article 301, which violates free speech)
-the denial of the Khojaly genocide is a source of national shame.

I am an American of Tunisian ancestry, and I must say that denying genocide is a source of shame because it prevents the acknowledgment of errors. Acknowledging genocide, however, will improve relations and avoid making future errors.

Is the human ultranationalist ego that big? If I were president of the United States, I would’ve apologized for the Native American genocide and for the human suffering inflicted by the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These acknowledgements don’t make me less American. Admitting my country’s horrific errors makes me more American. Why don’t people change their definition of identity and make it more constructive?
I’m ashamed of a considerable amount of US history, but I consider it an obligation to have good relations with people who have had (or still have) antagonisms with the US (eg. Japan, Russia, Cuba…).
I also see my Tunisian origins as an obligation to have good relations with the French, the Spanish and the Libyans.

I’m currently working on a book called “In Search of Coherence” that I hope will open the eyes of the world. Listen, if I am interested in learning about the Armenian language, the Azerbaijani language and the Turkish language (I know English, French and Spanish so far. My Japanese is not too bad, and I started learning modern Greek) as well as their cultures, what does that mean? Furthermore, if Lonely Planet makes the effort of writing books about every single country in the world, then all of your countries must have some merit..

The merit will simply increase if countries acknowledge their errors and see their neighbors as human beings.

A place of birth is not a curse. Make the most of it. If I were Armenian, I would try to have good relations with Turks and Azeris as well as acknowledge the Khojaly genocide, but at the same time, push Turks to admit the horrors of the past in order to coexist in the future.
If I were a Turk, I would acknowledge the Armenian genocide and see having good relations with Armenians (as well as Kurds and Greeks) as a duty.
If I were Azeri, I would try to have good relations with Armenians, but at the same time, I would push for the Khojaly genocide.
I am only applying one standard, and that is to see people as human beings.

Many countries have not come to terms with their history. In Spain, Franco is not completely dead (the Partido Popular has some of Franco’s legacy). In Italy, there are wine bottles with Mussolini’s face…

Don’t let the past paralyze your country in the face of problems. Let the past be your guide instead.

To the best of my knowledge, the only country that has really come to terms with the past is Germany. Willy Brandt kneeled in front of the Warsaw memorial in the 70s, and the Germans have confronted their horrific Nazi past and the Holocaust.

Please come to terms with your history. It will deflate a few egos, but it will not reduce anyone’s national pride. You will gain a few lessons as well as understanding of others in the long run.

Is it genocide or not? If it is why do you bark so much and undertake yourself all Armenians??? If the world recognizes it, what would change?? You all see Holocaust to Jews and what is the difference now? The only thing has changed is: The “zionist jews” are not the victims now but they are the killers as we see. Some people(even our historian teacher (german)) accept that in 1915 was a genocide but they deny what happened and happens against Palestinians. Don’t you see anything behind that?
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Let’s see what happened in 1915. It is the year 1915; the beginning of the world war I. Think about what can happen there! April 1915 the next rebellion of the Armenians began in Van. The houses which were burning wasn’t armenian houses but kurdish and turkish. It is clearly proven that Armenians were allied with British, Russians and French. Where did they get the weapons for their rebellions??? Of course from Russia. The rebellions didnt began in 1915. They began right after the Turkish-Russian war in 1877-78. Armenians traited Ottoman Empire and were brainwashed by imperialistic empires against the Ottoman Empire. Even the consatitutional eras didnt change anything (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Constitutional_Era_(Ottoman_Empire)) and tousands of Muslims were killed by Armenians. Of course you Armenians deny these and suggest us Turks to learn the history.
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Here is the list:

THE LIST OF UNDETERMINED NUMBER OF INCIDENTS
Volume and Doc. No Date Place Deaths
1/2 1906-2-11 Revan The people of 25 villages
1/3 1915-5-9 Bitlis The people of 1 village
1/3 1915-5-9 Bitlis No. of people not known
1/4 1916-5-22 Van No. of people not known
1/6 1916-5-23 Van No. of people not known
1/6 1915-5-11 Trabzon No. of people not known
1/7 1916-6-11 Bitlis No. of people not known
1/7 1916-6-11 Van No. of people not known
1/7 1916-6-11 Başkala No. of people not known
1/10 1915-6-11 Van 180 Families
1/11 1915-6 Bitlis 100 Families
1/11 1915-5 Van No. of people not known
1/11 1915-6-10 Maçka No. of people not known
1/13 1914-12-17 Eleşkird No. of people not known
1/13 1916-5-23 Hınıs No. of people not known
1/13 1915-12 Muş No. of people not known
1/13 1915-1 Muş The people of 2 villages
1/13 1915 Elaziz No. of people not known
1/13 1915-8 Gevaş No. of people not known
1/13 1915-2 Şatak 9 villages
1/14 1915 Hizan No. of people not known
1/18 1916-6-3 Diyarbakır 55
1/20 1916-5 Tercan 30 villages
2/2 1919-1-25 Ardahan No. of people not known
2/15 1919-7-8 Gülantab 2 villages
2/20 1919-7-16 Büyük Vedi No. of people not known
2/32 1919-7-25 Gümrü No. of people not known
2/35 1919-7-12 Kars 1 Families
3/1 1919-7 Artvin Several
3/1 1919-7 Bayezid A series of people
3/4 1919-8 Nahçıvan The people of 3 villages
3/6 1919 Sarıkamış In large no.
3/6 1919 Sarıkamış 1 village
3/6 1919 Sarıkamış No. of people not known
3/6 1919-8-15 Erzurum 30 Families
3/8 1919-7-12 Kars 2 Families
3/9 1919-8-12 Kars No. of people not known
3/9 1919-8-12 Kars All Males
3/9 1919-8-12 Kars All people
3/9 1922-8-18 Kars All Males
3/12 1919-8-31 Sarıkamış All people
3/12 1919-8-31 Kağızman No. of people not known
3/13 1919-8-18 Kağızman No. of people not known
3/14 1919-9 Karaurgan No. of people not known
3/16 1919-9-14 Sarıkamış No. of people not known
3/31 1920-3-3 Kozan In large no.
3/33 1920 Şuragel No. of people not known
3/37 1920-3-9 Zaruşad No. of people not known
3/37 1920-3-16 Kağızman No. of people not known
3/47 1920-5-24 Kars Civarı No. of people not known
3/49 1920-7-27 Oltu-Göle All males
3/50 1920-5-24 Kars civarı All people
4/8 1920-12-3 Kars No. of people not known
4/23 1919 Kars civarı a few Tents
4/23 1919-3 Kars civarı 85 Families
4/23 1919-3 Sarıkamış The people of 1 village
4/23 1919-2 Iğdır Hundreds
4/23 1920 Kars civarı No. of people not known
4/26 1920-11 Erivan-Kars No. of people not known
4/30 1918 Tekman No. of people not known

Tell me if you need more. The “GREAT MASSACRE” were made by Armenian nationalists and they still do the same in Karabag. WE ALL SAW WHAT THEY DID WITH AZERIS.
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Someone who don’t know what is peace and kill people, has not the right to seek justice.

Having read this I believed it was very enlightening.
I appreciate you taking the time and effort to put this information together.
I once again find myself spending a lot of time both reading and commenting.